Finished Mug Costs

[wayupnorth]

Not one of my better ideas.....

[willd]

Not one of my better ideas.....

Sorry!

[froggy]

I too have software which tells me ink usage per job. I dont really take much notice of it though, as it can lull you into a false sense of cost.

The way I work out ink cost is this;

I calculate how much ink I buy per month and how many meters of digital vinyl (insert any type of media that goes through your machine and finishes up with ink on it.) goes through the machine.

I then divide the meterage (number of sheets etc) by the ink cost to get my ink cost per running meter for the month. This also means that cleaning cycles, mistakes etc are accounted for.

By working backwards from my actual sales figures I can estimate quite accurately the cost of the average job going through my machines, to the point of pre finishing.

Obviously it helps if you are buying ink and media on a regular basis. If you dont use your machinery on regular basis and put work through it your ink costs per job will go through the roof, these printers love cleaning cycles!

[pisquee]

Another method I've used for calculating ink usage is weighing the cartridges themselves before and after a big print job - if I know we're going to be printing 50 metres of fabric, then it's a good job to use as a basis for working out average ink cost per metre of transfer paper.